Come Valentine’s Day, many unattached people, or people in less-than-fulfilling relationships, may be willing to accept less than they really deserve, just to have a few crumbs of “romance.” Sarah Strudwick writes that perhaps it’s time for a change. Read:
Happy pathological free Valentines Day, on WakingYouUp.wordpress.com.
abbri, it truly is the best revenge… spaths want to destroy us… what better revenge when we not only survived them, but also heal and find a fulfilling life again.
Darwinsmom, thank you so much for sharing your story. Our paths can be quite bumpy and I expect that he couldn’t even verbalize what created “the wall”.
I feel for you as I know all too well the gut-wrenching physical pain. It’s only in the past couple of years that I realized my husband of 30 years was a P. Things seems fine but now I know I looked past many things. I continue to deal with that loss as family is everything to me and I lalso ost my Mom only a short time after the divorce was finalized. I know the feeling of being pre-suicidal…..it’s quite an ugly place to be. So glad you found your way out of that with the help of your guide. I’ve started attending a spiritual (non-denominational) group that has raised energy sessions which helps facilitate a connection to the spiritual side of things. It is helping me to cope. I know my life path had to be adjusted but I am having difficulty accepting it. Hopefully I will have an awakening like you experienced.
Take care and I’m happy you had a communication that let you know he is ok……and that you still hold a place in his heart.
In a way, the spath was not as painful… The relationshit with the spath damaged my functioning and handling of stress, but I was over the emotional loss fast… because I had endured much more pain over losing the other a decade ago. And at least several times the other has proven himself to be of valid support and actual importance and inspiration. He rejected me once, but he also helped to rebuild myself in a supportive manner after I did the first part and we became friends again. While, he seems forever separated from me, he’s worthy of love and is real. The spath, who started out to be so physically affectionate to me was never real at all, and deserves nada.
Well, he’s still alive, but not so ok really. He’s presuicidal himself I think, talking about crying and eating bitter poisonous fruit with a death wish. But he’s reaching out for spiritual help. I am grateful he exists, and still exists. I hope he’ll do what needs to be done to keep existing.
Also, the spath NEVER knew about this man in my past and what a great impact he had in it. He NEVER knew that he still had a place in my heart, or that I was very occasionally still in contact with him, let alone what type of contact we have had the past ten years. Originally I didn’t tell him, because I find it unfair to a new man in my life to suddenly have someone of almost spiritual proportions in my heart. I don’t mind it that I don’t always feel as strongly or as passionate for a new man in my life. It’s of no consequence for me. Eventually, I did want to tell, but he was not interested in listening even… before I could tell, he was already distracting me and going about his stuff. I think the spath supposed he knew me well enough and assumed he was the one I was totally head over heels about. He made a mistake there. In a way, this past love, salvaged me from being hurt deeply on an emotional level. He hurt me in other ways, and I was trauma bonded for sure, and addicted. But when he discarded me, I still had my old love for another in my heart as a memory, AND it was easy to compare the trauma-bonded-love with my old, unconditional love. It was very easy then to realize that what I had felt mostly for the spath was addiction and trauma-bonding.
Had the spath known about this old love and how deep it ran and still runs through my soul, he might have made even worse attempts to wow me over in the lovebombing phase.
Darwinsmom,
your story is touching, thanks for sharing it. It brought to mind how difficult it can be to every really empathize with another. We project our own way of being and thinking onto others in order to understand them, but that can never be completely accurate because each of us has a unique perspective.
When you meet a spath and a borderline, I’ve read that they can have very similar characteristics. Same behaviors and even the same history. But the difference is in their motivations. Borderlines really want to be loved while spaths have suppressed that far more deeply and disdain those who love them. (though they still want to be loved – they hate you for it).
It’s virtually impossible for anyone to tell the difference because spaths lie and can pretend to be borderline, if they are so inclined.
To be clear, this is just an example, I’m not saying your friend is either borderline or spath or anything else. Just saying that motivations for behavior are so complex that it can be very difficult to judge the root cause.
I think you did the right thing by giving him his freedom. We can’t force anyone to be who we want. We can only decide for ourselves what we value in ourselves. I hope your friend is going to be ok.
Abbri,
thank God that you are ok and got away from that spath.
They will often prey on the strong because we have more for them to leech off of, but when they find a person with lots of emotional problems, they can’t resist draining them to death.
My spath caused one gf to commit suicide and I was supposed to be next. He told everyone that I was suicidal and even called the suicide prevention line and sent the cops to my parents’ house by telling them that I was going to kill myself, after I had left him.
The truth is that he was poisoning me for over 20 years and he had it planned to “suicide me” but I got away.
Spaths love suicide and I can tell you with certainty that when you see a suicide, you should look for a spath nearby.
.
Darwinsmom, I had a boyfriend once like the one you described your ex (the scientist) to be. He is the reason I moved to Colorado. We started out as good friends for a year or two, and it wasn’t until I was visiting with him for a few weeks that we took our friendship to the next level. He was equally unaffectionate, and I found myself always being insecure with him. After a while, I felt enough emotional disconnect from him that I began dating someone else. The ex and I, however, always stayed friends, and we are still friends. There will always be an emotional wall there where we just don’t connect. I think he has the aspbergers-like scientific personality. But I accept him for who he is. I have gone through many bf’s over the years, and he’s had two gfs, even having a child with one of them who turned out to have a similar personality type to him (and because of this, be a special needs child). His last gf was, by his admission, the “love of his life”. They were truly happy for a while, but then she eventually grew weary of his rigid ways and left. I doubt he will ever marry – he is 61.
We have kept in touch over the years because our lives intersect in various ways. For instance, he is the “daddy” of my cat who just died. So she was like our “kid”. Also, he owns rental properties and occasionally pays me well to do interior painting for him. We have remodeled homes together and just had general business connections.
I have never forgotten that he paid my room and board many years ago and “took care of me” back when we were dating. So I offer to help him out whenever I can. I always watch my feelings when I talk to him and notice that same feeling of being abandoned because of his emotional disconnect from me. However, I have my own abandonment issues to deal with, so I don’t get angry with him anymore.
Right now, he is suffering immensely. His expensive health insurance didn’t cover his last hip replacement, so he had to borrow the money. His rental properties have all lost so much value he can’t sell. And with his bad hip, he can’t do the remodel work the way he used to. He is looking at being homeless so he can rent out his home to survive. It’s very sad to watch someone who’s been working his whole life have to go through this.
Star, thank you for sharing your story. It sounds familiar, yes.
Sky, I am stuck on the same enigma: why do we need to sacrifice one need for another?
I am on some rollercoaster at the moment somehow: ever since I received that mail, though it was a cry of help by him, my soul has been singing and humming. I’ve been weeping tears a few times (and haven’t cried since August) since Wednesday night. But not out of sadness (at first), but almost because of beauty that is rather indescribable. At the very least it made me highly emotional at the moment and therefore vulnerable.
A lot of stuff has been going through my mind the past days: So, I now understand that my big love did not have the need to be so physically affectionate, and that until recently I equated love with physical affection, because that’s my own nature and the model I was raised with. I understand how it made me insecure, where perhaps I didn’t need to be insecure at all.
I had my best friend on the phone last night and told him about my big love contacting me again, telling what had occurred to him the past year, but also the new insights.
And then he said: well now you know that if someone makes you insecure that they are not the one, that they’re incompatible with you. And actually, that was what I thought too the past few months, following stargazer’s story about the neighbour and reflecting about other men that used to make me insecure… but these insights actually make me think the opposite at least on some men, and make me not be so sure anymore that my best friend is right.
I realize that at the time my big love and I could not have worked out, because I lacked the understanding that he did not need to be as constantly physically affectionate towards me. My insecurity did not come from him behaving wronly or not enough… my insecurity came from not knowing, from inexperience. I do think that’s something totally different.
Why is it so important to me? Because the ex-spath did not make me insecure at all. Actually, there wasn’t ever anyone who made me so sure that he loved me. And we were often physically affectionate. I felt completely at ease in showing my affections, and he even invited me to hug him, cuddle him. He had a touching gift. As soon as he touched me, laid his arm around my waist, I felt comletely at ease. And he knew literally out of my mouth that was what reassured me and what I liked. So, he was physically my match… except for the fact that it was all a lie. I only found out too late that he was cheating on me or trying to keep past doors open to his former ex-es at the same time he was reassuring me in this physical affectionate manner.
So, here I am… with one man in my past who actually loved and cared for me, and was being his true self around me… And it made me insecure, because I didn’t know his type of affection communication. And on the other hand with another man in my recent past who fulfilled all those ideas of ideal physically affectionate communication, who made feel so sure and secure about it, and it was all a lie.
And I’m wondering, would it be truly that incompatable? Once two people understand their manner of communicating affection, no matter how different, does that make people by definition incomatible.
If so, then love seems a total hopeless case for me. I won’t be attracted to men who are extraverts less than me, nor will they be attracted to me. I have to stay away from men who are more extraverted than myself, because chances are they are disorderly extraverted, so that leaves introverts who will communicate bodily affection differently than myself.
I now think that the other’s type of physical affectionate communication does not have to be the same as mine, as long as I can feel free to express my affections my way.
I also think there’s a difference between feelings of insecurity, and feelings of being unsettled or dread. While I felt comletely at ease with the spath, certainly the first year, I was worried about the red flags I didn’t know the meaning of yet. I didn’t feel at ease with the big love, but I felt no dread that there might be something wrong with him or that he was dangerous.
Oh, gosh, what a mess…
And thinking of the past, and having my feelings for the big love be so utmost in my mind the past few days, made me vulnerable and weepy over another issue. One of my vulnerabilities for the spath was my child-wish. From my 19 until my 22 I had severe painful menstruation. The pain would wake me up at times, and I was dazed by codeine painkillers for 5 days, monthly. It was as if someone stuck a dagger into my side stomach and was slowly twisting it 5 days in a row. Echo didn’t show a thing, so I only got prescribed heavier painkillers. But after 3 years I thought this could not go on any longer, unless I was willing to sacrifice my kidneys in the long run. I got a new gynaecologist and she agreed to do a laparascopy, both of us suspecting I might have endomytriosis. We were right. But she had never seen it as severe with someone as young as myself then. I had level 3 endomytriosis. For those who don’t know this condition: it means that you have cells outside of the uterus that bleed along in your body during menstruation. It was on the outside wall of my intestines, my left abdomen had a lot of endomytriosis, scar tissue and blood cloths. My left tube was wound around a large blood cloth, thick and had been moved. She tested it by sending harmless coloured fluids up the tubes, but nothing could pass through the left tube, and even if it did, no egg from the left ovary could even reach the tube because it was displaced. She had to bind the left tube off to avoid the risk of ectopic pregnancy. Meanwhile, because of the scar tissue all of my uterus was pulled to the left side, and the right tube was stretched out like a rubber band. Had I waited longer than then to have the laparoscopy it might have snapped. So, she managed to save at least the right tube, saying that I could still get normally pregnant at the right side. It all depends on which ovary releases an egg that month. But she also warned me not to wait until I was 35 to start having a child.
BTW level 4 endomytriosis means it has infested the ovaries itself, and thereby making a woman infertile, because the ovaries will be destroyed.
At the time I was in a relationship that lasted 2.5 years more. But we were both studying and sensible, and didn’t want to get preggers without both having work. Then we broke up (which is not a bad thing, because he was incompatable with me in the long run). 2 years later there was my big love. But after him, not until I was 35 did I have a long term relationship anymore. I could have gotten preggers by myself before that, but I found it irresponsible to bring a child in this world when my career was not yet stable enough, and could not be sure whether I’d have the same amount of teaching hours, income, or same school the next yeear.
At 35 I started to feel ready and was contemplating to go to a hospital and get pregnant via insemination, with my best friend (who’s gay but would love to be a father) as donor and the possibility to give a child not just a mother, but also a father… albeit parents who wouldn’t be living together. And it would have been exactly what I would have done, had I not met the spath in Nicaragua. I allowed “nature” to decide whether I’d get pregnant with him or not. In the 6 months we were actually physically together, it never happened though. In hindishgt, that’s not a bad thing… and yet, now I’ll be 38 in 2 weeks, I’m studying again for years to come, I have even less of a secure job position than in the past. And I doubt I’ll be involved with anyone the coming years. And though I wish a child, I cannot do it under such unstable circumstances. It is irresponsible imo. I’m crying as I write to think that I’ll probably be past 40 when it’s stable enough again, and by then I might already be in menopauze. It breaks my heart to consider the reality that I may never have a child at all. I even voiced this to my mother, the idea that perhaps it is not meant to be fore me. And yet it seems so unfair: I have so much love inside of me, and I know I would be a good well grounded mother, after the example of my own. And time just slipped by, while I was already half infertile to begin with.
I think though that I should get a total check-up by a gynaecologogist and perhaps save some eggs for the freezer. I think I should do this this year.
Darwinsmom,
I cannot imagine what it’s like to want children and not be able to have them. I never wanted children, so that’s never been an issue for me. You have some tough choices to make, and I don’t envy you. I don’t know how easy it is to adopt children where you are, but there are SO many children in the world who need good homes.
Have you ever read The Five Love Languages? I know my main love language is physical touch. It’s how I show love and how I like to receive it, though I also appreciate quality time, words of encouragement, acts of service, and gift giving. The Canadian guy from Costa Rica also had touch as his main love language. That is why our connection was so incredible. He gave me exactly what I needed and what I never really got from any other man. It was heaven on earth while it lasted. Partners can learn to express love in each other’s love languages instead of splitting up, if they are willing to change. But in my experience, people who are not touchy feely don’t just ‘become’ touchy feely. You can love someone, and they can even be your soulmate. But if you are not compatible, it just will not work.
Personally, I think you should get everything you want, and you shouldn’t have to settle. 38 seems so young to me, and from my perspective, you still have many years ahead of you to find someone compatible. I know I could not be with someone who was not physically affectionate. No, my neighbor is not the physically affectionate type either, but we never really “dated” so who knows what he would be like with someone he’s really into. I just know I couldn’t be with someone who does not enjoy giving and receiving touch even if he is wonderful in every other way.
Darwinsmom,
my exspath was very touchy affectionate at the beginning. He had all the “moves” down, he knew how normal people express affection. That’s what made it so difficult in the end to accept that he never actually EXISTED.
At the end, when he was playing the last con pretending that Homeland security was after him, we were talking and I put my arms around him. We were face to face and I said, “I know we hate each other sometimes, but we really make a great team.” It had been months since the last time we hugged like that. I felt very close to him. He responded, “Honey, I don’t hate you, I LOOOOVVE you!”
Then a couple of days later, I figured it all out. I couldn’t help thinking (to my utter bewilderment) of that moment and how convincingly he said it, that I believed it.
Yet, in retrospect, his response was off topic, because my comment was not about love or hate, it was just me saying that we make a great team despite our differences. HE DIDN’T GET THAT. The word HATE was what he focused on and his response was to immediately dispel any doubts about his “love” for me. because that’s what spaths do during a con. They have to keep the true believer, believing they are loved because then, everything else just naturally follows.